Power of the People through Pictures: A Liberian Clan’s Victory over an International Palm Oil Company

With lush rain forests, ample mineral reserves and sizeable off-shore oil deposits, Liberia is rich in natural resources. Despite this bounty, the West African nation ranks among the poorest countries in the world, and access to education, health care and employment for most Liberians is woefully limited. As a result, many rural Liberians depend on their land to survive. Such is the case for the Jogbahn clan of Grand Bassa County—a group that, with the help of AJWS grantee Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), successfully pushed back against a British-owned palm oil company seeking to grab and develop their ancestral territory.

This photo essay offers a deeper look into the Jogbahn clan’s saga, which was also documented in a recent AJWS blog story.

All photos by Jonathan Torgovnik

Part of Liberia’s Bassa tribe, the Jogbahn clan is spread out across 11 villages in District #4 of Grand Bassa County. Their chief elder, Joseph Cheo Johnson (pictured), oversees some 38,000 people from 10 different clans, including the Jogbahn. One of his main duties is to protect his people’s land.

In 2008, the Liberian government leased 34,500 acres of land in Cheo’s district to the British-owned company Equatorial Palm Oil (EPO), for a period of 50 years. About 14,000 of these acres were part of a pre-existing palm oil plantation; the location of the remaining 20,500 was undetermined.

Hoping to acquire the additional 20,500 acres they were promised by the Liberian government, EPO met with Jogbahn elders in 2012 to ask if they could expand onto some of the clan’s land. Thanks to a progressive land policy that grants local communities legal rights to their ancestral lands even if they lack documentation to prove it, the Jogbahn were free to accept or refuse EPO’s request.

“We said ‘No,’” recalled Garmondah Barwon (pictured), a Jogbahn elder who joined Cheo in the meeting with EPO. “We said…. [your plantation] is big [enough]… and if you take [our] land, we will have nowhere to go.”

Like many rural Liberians, the Jogbahn depend on their land to survive. They farm, fish, hunt and gather in the forests and rivers that surround their villages, selling any surpluses in local markets. Here, Lucy Zor is pictured making gari, a cassava-based farina she sells in order to pay her children’s school fees.

“We get rice, cassava, plantain and other foodstuffs from this land, and that’s our livelihoods,” explained Dekontee Zor (pictured). Dekontee uses the fruits from wild oil palm trees to make palm oil, which she then sells to a local healer for use in traditional medicines.

The palm oil made from the fruits of oil palm trees (pictured) is also used locally in cooking, and internationally in commercial goods that range from vegetable oil to shampoo to ice cream to packaged bread. The multi-billion dollar palm oil industry has led companies like EPO to lease or buy land in countries where conditions are ripe for growing oil palm trees.

EPO aren’t the only ones trying to profit from palm oil in Liberia: the Jogbahn themselves have a mini palm oil “factory” from which they produce larger volumes of the product, for sale in area markets.

Finally, in addition to a vital source of sustenance and livelihoods, the Jogbahn clan’s land serves as both a legacy for their children and a link to their departed loved ones—a spiritual connection made visible by the raised graves that surround their communities.

Despite the Jogbahn clan’s refusal of EPO’s request, in September 2013, EPO began measuring—or “surveying”—parts of the Jogbahn’s land, with plans to expand onto it. In response, some 250 Jogbahn men walked to the survey site and asked the company to leave. Two days later, the survey team returned, and the men decided to march to their county capital of Buchanan to ask their superintendent for help.

Not long into the Jogbahn’s march, EPO officials and armed police officers intercepted the men. According to Jogbahn elder Borbor Glagbo (pictured), EPO security tear gassed the protestors, beat some of them with batons, and piled 17 of them into trucks with plans to arrest them in Buchanan. But when they reached the city, the county attorney ordered the men’s release.

Sustainable Development Institute (SDI)—a leading Liberian land rights organization based in the Liberian capital of Monrovia—had been monitoring the situation around the EPO plantation for months. When they heard about the crackdown on the Jogbahn demonstrators, SDI immediately stepped in to help, tapping Nelson Tarr (pictured) to be their local representative in the Jogbahn communities.

One of the first things SDI did was conduct an investigation into the Jogbahn’s struggle. Concluding that EPO had indeed violated the clan’s land rights, they submitted a formal complaint on the Jogbahn’s behalf to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)—the international body that regulates the palm oil industry.

As they awaited a response from the roundtable, SDI trained Jogbahn villagers on their land rights, taught them about non-violent means to protest EPO’s activities, and transported them to meetings with the company and Liberian officials—including a meeting with the Liberian president in March 2014. “SDI taught us that when we say ‘No,’ we mean ‘No,’ but we don’t…have to use violence,” said Teresa Zor (pictured).

In June 2015, almost two years after SDI submitted the complaint to RSPO, the roundtable announced that there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that the land EPO was seeking to develop belonged to the Jogbahn people, and gave the company one year to resolve all issues with the clan. The two parties then agreed to conduct a joint mapping of the boundaries of the plantation and the Jogbahn’s land, respectively. SDI trained Jogbahn members on the use of GPS technology, and the mapping was successfully held on January 27th, 2016. EPO accepted the boundaries outlined by the Jogbahn and submitted its fourth and final report to RSPO on July 7th, 2016—marking the end of the clan’s three-year long struggle.

Thanks to SDI’s support and the clan’s own tenacity, the Jogbahn’s land is now safe from land grabs by EPO. But in a country where illiteracy is high, access to legal aid is limited and international companies wield enormous influence, rural communities must remain on guard. SDI is working on the frontlines of the fight against land grabs in Liberia, supporting towns and villages under threat across the nation. AJWS is proud to stand with them.